


Coffee Cart-Client Privilege

by FrivolousSuits



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Crimes & Criminals, Drugs, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 02:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17133431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrivolousSuits/pseuds/FrivolousSuits
Summary: Mike runs a coffee cart.Thecoffee cart.





	Coffee Cart-Client Privilege

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aspirateurkilleuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspirateurkilleuse/gifts).



> Happy holidays, aspirateurkilleuse! Though you're not the biggest fan of coffee, I hope you still enjoy this twist on a coffee shop AU. I promise the coffee isn't the most important substance that this barista sells ;-)
> 
> Written for the prompt "AU/cute/pining."

Mike can’t help it; his brain just does it.  “It” is short-circuiting every time a particular bastard strides past Mike’s coffee cart.

Trevor pointed him out the first time. “Look at this clown,” Trevor said, and Mike answered with a quip about how said clown had a rod stuck up his ass, and though Mike was doomed from the subtext right there, he didn’t realize exactly how doomed until he caught sight of the man’s exquisite, divinely gorgeous face.

Goddammit.

But he's a classic capitalist bastard; he leaves no question about the matter between the wide ties and the pinstriped shirts, between the haircut that probably costs more to maintain than Mike’s apartment and the designer sunglasses he whips out on 94% of clear-skied mornings. He’s undoubtedly evil. Mike’s calculated far too many statistics about him.

He must work in the office building right in front of Mike’s cart; every weekday he saunters in and out, entering on average at 9:13 A.M.— surprisingly late, at the tail end of the morning coffee rush. To pull that off without getting fired he must be a rainmaker, a so-called “closer.” But that building has fifty-nine floors stuffed full of traders and lawyers and analysts, all grabbing money in slightly distinct if consistently unethical ways, so Mike hasn’t figured out exactly which profession lays claim to this stranger. This peculiarly glorious and sadly nameless stranger, who never orders coffee from a mere cart and will therefore never play any real role in Mike’s life.

Vivid nighttime fantasies notwithstanding.

* * *

 

“What’s the most reassuring flavor of bagel you have?”

Mike squints. “The most ‘reassuring’?”

“I got a promotion,” mumbles Harold Gunderson.

“Wow.” Mike carefully tones down his surprise. “Congratulations.”

Harold gives him a dazed nod. “Yeah, I’m now Harvey Specter’s personal associate.”

“Harvey who?”

“Harvey Reginald Specter?” His eyes get even wider than usual. “I don’t know how to do him justice with a description, he’s cool, and terrifying, and flawless—”

“Let me guess,” Mike snarks, “his hair’s insured for ten thousand dollars.”

“Is it?”

Mike looks into Harold’s entirely earnest eyes. “I was joking. _Mean Girls_? ‘Regina George’ ring a bell?”

He gets a blank stare.

“Harvey Specter,” Harold resumes breathlessly, “just got promoted to senior partner, and he needs a personal associate, and he rejected the top ten candidates from the last Harvard Law class, so Louis gave me the position—”

“Louis Litt, torturer of innocents?” He snorts, because though he’s never stepped inside the hallowed halls of Pearson Hardman Mike’s heard more than enough about its office politics; he can thank Louis’s reign of terror for several thousands’ worth of sales of decidedly non-caffeinated products. “That’s suspiciously nice of him—”

“He hates Harvey,” Harold bursts out, “and he gave me to Harvey to torture us both.”

“. . . Can I suggest a raisin bagel with strawberry cream cheese? That’s the most comforting combo I’ve got.”

“Please,” Harold nearly sobs, thrusting his cash at Mike.

Mike hands over the bagel along with Harold’s standard drink order— a small chamomile tea, milk with five sugars— and bids him goodbye as he trudges back to the office.

This isn’t the first horror story Mike’s heard about the innards of Pearson Hardman. As the friendly neighborhood caffeine dispenser, he basically doubles as a therapist; paralegals and partners alike spill their stories— without always redacting privileged information, they’re damn lucky Mike hasn’t added insider trading to his resume— and tell him about the incessant drama and backstabbing of corporate law.

Still, he can’t deny the allure.

Though he tries to put promotions and law firms out of his mind, no customers come by to help distract him, and so he ends up pulling out his phone and typing in “Harvey Specter.” No, “Harvey Reginald Specter,” who probably does car commercials in Japan and gives awesome punches to the face—

That face.

Mike pulls up Harvey’s profile, and that face shakes his worldview to its foundations.

After 2 years, 3 months, and 25 days of hopelessly pining, Mike knows the glorious bastard’s glorious, if mildly preposterous, name.

* * *

 

“What’s good here?”

Alarms are blaring, and Mike briefly wonders if those are in his head, warning him that this is not a drill and that he must endeavor not to act like an idiot.

“It’s all good here.”

Harvey Specter snorts. “Really, every single item?”

Mike raises his hands, gesturing at the whole cart. “This, my friend, is a science, and I’m master of the field.”

“ _Black Hawk Down_.”

For 2 years, 4 months and 26 days, Mike has been threading appropriate quotes into his sales pitches, a little something to stir up the customer service routine. Sometimes repeat customers recognize a reference after a few hours and boast to him the next day, but no one’s ever caught a quote immediately.

Until now.

Harvey’s smirking at him. Mike tries to mirror the expression, but his smile turns out too soft.

“I recommend the plain coffee,” he replies. “It’s not the fanciest, but it tastes great. Maybe a large cup for a brand-new senior partner—”

Mike stops short.

“You know me?”

“Doesn’t all of New York know the great Harvey Reginald Specter?” he says, aiming for flippant.

“Not the ‘Reginald’ part, I hope.” For a second Harvey’s smirk yields to a real smile, a mix of bewilderment and something gentler. But then the smirk’s back, and Mike would doubt it was ever gone if not for his memory.

That in-between look is one to savor.

“I’ll take a large plain coffee. Black, two sugars.”

Mike starts making the cup even as he looks over Harvey’s shoulder. Swarms of businesspeople are filing out of the office building, grumbling and staring at their phones, some of them in bright red hats.

“Ah,” Mike realizes. “The annual fire drill.”

“Yeah,” Harvey confirms with a sigh, “which is why I can’t just use the executive kitchen’s coffee machine.”

Harvey’s jaw tenses as he stifles a yawn.

“Rough night?”

Now his face splits into a lecherous grin. “You could say that.”

Mike hands over the cup and takes his cash, trying to keep the jealousy off his face. Still, Harvey looks at him a second too long before heading back into the crowd, dark eyes flashing with interest.

* * *

 

“One Coffee-zilla, please.”

Mike doesn’t see him approach; he’s busy tucking certain side products into their secret compartment, behind several stacks of creamer cups. But he springs up immediately, beaming. “And how many shots in your espresso?”

“You know _The Iron Giant_?”

Harvey’s obviously pleased, and Mike’s heart skitters like _he_ just drank the espresso.

“You are who you choose to be,” he quotes. “An admirable sentiment, if utterly impractical.”

“Tell me about it,” Harvey says, leaning forward against the cart’s window ledge. “And I don’t really want an espresso. Same order as last time: a large cup of—”

“Plain coffee, black with two sugars,” Mike fills in the rest only a little too fast and starts making the order. “So what’s your trouble, huh?”

“Well,” Harvey drawls, still threading in his allusions, “I’m just over here trying to be a run-of-the-mill fat cat, some industrialist, but my boss has different ideas. She wants me to do a pro bono case.”

“That’s amazing.”

Harvey raises an eyebrow. “It’s a waste of my time, which runs a thousand dollars an hour.”

“And yet you took the time to walk all the way down here, despite the fact that your executive kitchen’s an option again.”

He shrugs. “I do what I want.”

Mike passes over the cup, but he doesn’t want Harvey to go just yet. “Tell me about the case?”

“It’s a sexual harassment case.”

“And?”

Harvey huffs and takes a sip of his drink; Mike half-expects him to claim privilege and walk away.

“It’s a tale older than time,” he says instead. “The boss abused his position, HR ignored her, now she’s out with nowhere else to go.”

“That’s awful.”

“Sure, but we could have any old associate handle it.”

“Even Harold?”

Harvey narrows his eyes. “You know Harold?”

“I certainly do.”

“Then you know giving him the case would doom our client.”

Mike snaps and points a finger-gun at Harvey. “So you do care!”

“I’m not about caring, I’m about winning.”

“In that case . . . maybe you’re avoiding this pro bono case because you’re afraid you won’t win.”

Harvey serves him a scornful look. “You can’t bait me that easily.”

“You sure?” Mike sees his scorn and raises him an earnest puppy-dog gaze. “You’re positive you have a strategy?”

“Sure,” Harvey says with a cavalier shrug. “If he’s done it now, he’s done it before. All I need is a couple corroborating witnesses and I’ve won it.”

Mike keeps probing. “And how are you going to find those witnesses?”

Harvey answers after only a moment’s contemplation. “Subpoena the company records. They did an investigation, all the answers are right there.”

“Except they wouldn’t willingly turn over their records, would they? They’d move to dismiss because of a lack of evidence—”

“So I’d force a backroom deal,” Harvey retorts, their voices overlapping. “Maybe find evidence of other wrongdoing, press where it hurts—”

“Or,” Mike blurts, “you could make a legal argument in open court that their investigation’s itself a problem, because it was carried out under duress—”

“Because,” he finishes, “the investigators answered to the same damn boss.”

“Exactly.”

Harvey rocks back on his heels, a curious glint in his eyes. “We should have hired you.”

Shrugging, Mike gives him a humorless chuckle; he’s lost too much time already dwelling on that particular what-if. What matters is this wronged, betrayed woman, not him.

“You looking to become name partner eventually?”

“I’m not answering that on the grounds that I don’t want to.”

“Well, pro bono cases look great on a new name announcement,” Mike remarks. “Just saying.”

* * *

 

When Harvey reappears a couple days later, Mike already knows why.

“How’d the pro bono case go?”

Rolling his eyes, Harvey concedes with what he presumably thinks is grace. “It wasn’t a total waste of time.”

“Not least because you totally saved a woman’s job and got her 250,000 dollars.”

Harvey does a double take. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I’m like Donna, I know everything.”

“Now there’s two of you?”

“I know that you’re here to show off your giant . . . settlement,” Mike replies, drawing the pause out just long enough to make Harvey snicker. “But I learned something else.”

“Like what?””

“Like how you're made of metal, but you have feelings . . . and that means you have a soul!”

Harvey suppresses a laugh at the _Iron Giant_ quote. “One more word, and I’m suing you for slander.”

“How about we settle out of court?”

“How do you propose we do that?”

“I’ll throw in a free donut.”

Harvey’s face lights up like he’s four instead of forty, and that’s a laugh Mike can’t suppress.

* * *

 

Thanks to his memory and pattern recognition skills— plus Pearson Hardman’s strikingly poor understanding of how privilege works— Mike can typically predict what’s going on up on the fiftieth floor with uncanny accuracy. He knows the Bainbridge briefs will be filled with typos, since Gregory ordered a triple-shot espresso while proofreading them and that’s never a good sign. He knows their newest tech client entered his product launch without an excess of nervous energy, if only because he self-medicated with whipped cream to induce a sugar coma. He knows Louis is on the rampage from how he’s swapped Lactaid for full-fat.

He spots the first sign of trouble when Donna orders black coffee with two sugars and a couple pumps of her personal syrup blend.

“You order that for Harvey, don’t you?”

She nods. “It’s a little pick-me-up.”

“Why does he need a pick-me-up?” Mike says with a frown.

She glances up from the coffee, and for a scary second her eyes bore into his soul. “I think you should hear it from him.”

“But what if he doesn’t—”

She spins away before he finishes asking.

Harvey strolls up to Mike’s cart late in the day and surveys the remnants of his bagel collection. “Four-cheese bagel with pesto.”

“No banter today?”

“Only jokes I’ve got are puns on ‘pest,’” Harvey answers with a curl of his lip.

“Wanna talk about it?” Mike asks while he slides the bagel halves into his toaster. He turns back and leans in, propping his elbows on the window ledge. Harvey presses his lips together. “I offer coffee cart-client privilege.”

That earns him a snort. “You sure you can handle the soap opera?”

“Whatever you need, Harvey.”

He tips his head, no doubt calculating the risks. “Consider a hypothetical case where my associate botched our patent claim.”

Mike facepalms. “Harold . . .”

“Next imagine that I hypothetically end up in court to fix it, where a hypothetical judge blows up at me—”

“Hang on, what?”

“— and then in chambers accuses me of sleeping with his wife, who I didn’t touch.”

“Hypothetically?”

“No, actually,” Harvey snaps. “Never laid a hand on her.”

While passing the food over, Mike considers his sour expression. “So I’m guessing there’s a story there.”

Harvey’s fist clenches around his bagel, and he begins scrutinizing the cart’s cutlery options with undue interest.

“Not into married women?” Mike prompts.

“Or married men.”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Though Mike has the entirety of Webster’s unabridged dictionary memorized, he inconveniently forgets how to English.

Harvey plucks out a couple napkins and straightens up. “It’s nothing to worry about. Have a nice night, Mike.”

“Nothing to worry about,” as if. Mike’s not buying that devil-may-care act, and he starts racking his brain for ways to be of assistance in Harvey’s time of need—

_“Have a nice night, Mike.”_

Mike’s never told him his name, and yet Harvey knows it.

Goddammit.

* * *

 

It’s easy enough picking out a get-well-soon gift for Harvey. Mike briefly considered an ironic flower bouquet, but then gaming mogul Tom Keller showed up at his cart, asking for a bouquet of an entirely different sort. After a little needling Mike discovers he’s here on legal business, shopping around for a new lawyer.

“And I know I should go with a real shark like Litt, but—”

“But he creeps you out?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you could go with Louis, but as sharks go he’s just a hammerhead, or megamouth . . . I’d suggest going for the whale shark.”

“Who’s that?”

Mike grins.

* * *

 

The next morning Harvey’s chauffeur rolls up by Mike’s cart, but not in the usual town car.

“Yeah,” Mike observes, “that’s not flashy at all.”

“What’s the point of money if you can’t throw it at a good engine?”

“I don’t know, it pays for food and housing? But I guess when you’re born with a silver spoon and a—” he squints at the car before continuing— “Maserati GranTurismo, you forget how the other half lives.”

Harvey flashes a grin at him. “You know cars.”

“I can tell a ‘64 Buick Skylark from a ‘63 Pontiac Tempest.” He throws down his gauntlet.

“The solid rear axle and the positraction make that easy,” Harvey says, easily matching him. “That’s the first thing you’ve gotten wrong, by the way.”

“Excuse me?” he scoffs. “That was a stellar _My Cousin Vinny_ reference—”

“No,” Harvey corrects, a frown flickering across his brow. “Before that. Thanks for Keller, by the way.”

He vanishes into the crowd of commuters, and Mike starts to wonder.

* * *

 

Mike likes to read. Normally once he reads something, he understands it, but Harvey Specter’s proving to be the exception to many of his rules, and certain facts refuse to fall into place. Mike tries, but he can’t understand how Harvey used to be blond.

A blond ADA.

A blond ADA who became a dark-haired senior partner and inexplicably hides his prosecutorial experience, one of the high points of his already distinguished career.

Mike talks to Harvey Specter on a daily basis, but he hasn't solved this enigma just yet.

* * *

 

“Dude, are you really just eating my bagels for lunch?”

“Why not? They’re too big and dense to be a snack.”

 _So are you,_ Mike thinks, _and yet._

* * *

 

Out of the corner of his eye Mike watches Harvey slip into his black town car after suavely unbuttoning his suit jacket. Through sheer force of will he doesn’t ogle or gaze at him as he drives away, which is why he only hears it.

The metal crunch.

He whirls around. Two cars crashed headlong at an intersection, a yellow cab and a black town car, and though the speeds are low Mike’s brain stops.

Then Harvey emerges from the backseat of his car, rushing towards the two drivers who are already arguing, only to stumble.

Mike starts running.

* * *

 

“What are you doing here?”

“Checking up on you.” Sitting down on the chair next to Harvey in the emergency room, Mike passes him a tall cup of coffee. “Here, I brought you decaf tea.”

“Tea,” intones Harvey.

“It’s not that bad, I promise.”

Harvey sips it, shoots Mike a glare of pure skepticism, and then sips some more.

“Harold kinda screwed up your toy licensing deal,” Mike informs him with a wince. “He just can’t live without you.”

“You know it’s your fault he has to,” Harvey counters.

“I had to call an ambulance, you’re probably concussed!”

“I box, I take hits like this all the time.”

“And if you think that makes you need the hospital less, you’re _definitely_ concussed.”

Harvey snorts but surrenders the point. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be saving New York, one caffeine fix at a time?”

“I called in backup.” When Harvey raises an eyebrow, he adds, “My best friend, Trevor. He actually co-owns the cart.”

“And leaves you to do all the dirty work?”

Harvey’s joking. He sounds just like he’s joking, and yet there’s a adversarial edge in his voice . . . Or perhaps Mike’s imagining it out of paranoia. He stammers out his agreement.

This is the trouble with fraud.

“What are they advising as treatment?” He attempts to divert the conversation, suddenly keenly aware that he’s lying to one of the best litigators in the city, a man who prosecuted no less than 952 drug felony cases as a former ADA of this very district.

“I have to stay up late,” Harvey says.

“I can stay with you if you want.”

It’s dangerous, yet Mike can’t help himself.

“No need, I’ll catch up on work,” Harvey assures him. “Unfortunately, the doctors banned me from strenuous physical activity.”

His eyes flicker up Mike’s body. And common sense be damned, Mike nearly leans in close, nearly murmurs some movie-quote pickup line, nearly insinuates himself into a better man’s life and bed . . .

Mike’s phone rings.

He springs back and takes the call. “Yeah?”

Harvey’s looking.

“Sorry, you must have the wrong number,” he mutters, hanging up quickly and then turning back to Harvey. “Hey, I have to go—”

“Sure.”

Mike shoots to his feet, mumbles a get-well wish, and gets the hell out of there.

* * *

 

Harvey Specter is not a good man. He doesn’t even pretend to be, a self-proclaimed industrialist fat cat, a senior partner at a firm that only makes the rich richer. He’s in no position to judge.

And yet.

He’s in a position to ruin Mike. He could crush him into dust and march unflappably on, and that’s why Mike can’t get close to him, can’t hang on his every clever innuendo.

Mike can’t let this love story happen.

* * *

 

“I told you, I don’t have $50,000.” Though Mike’s quiet enough to avoid passerbys’ attention, he doesn’t break eye contact with his “customers” for a second. “What I do have are six types of bagels since I’ve only run out of sesame. Would you like one?”

One of the men laughs in his face. “One way or another, Trevor’s going to pay—”

“Hey, I want my usual but decaf,” Harvey says, stepping up to the window at just that moment, breaking up the gang.

On a hidden signal, the others straggle away, and Mike breathes a sigh of relief, only to find Harvey watching him intensely. Yet as he receives his coffee, all he says is a mild “Thank you.”

Mike’s phone rings again while he’s biking— another number he doesn’t know. With a groan he takes the call, snapping, “I told you, I’m getting the money—”

“Don’t.”

“. . . Harvey.”

“You’re in trouble.”

Though Harvey states it like fact, he pauses, waiting for confirmation.

“Yeah.” Mike releases a worn-out sigh. “I am.”

“And I’m going to guess it’s because of Trevor.”

“How can you—”

“I read people.”

That’s not the whole story, but Mike hasn’t got time to probe. “He’s in with the wrong people. He’s been dealing pot, they want 50 grand, and now they’re holding him until I get the money.”

“Holding him?”

“At gunpoint,” Mike breathes, and saying the words aloud sends a shiver through him. “Look, Harvey, I’m really sorry but I have to find the money, I have to get it from somewhere—”

“From me.”

“ _What_?”

“Give me the address.”

“I—”

“Now.”

“. . . Okay.”

* * *

 

“You have the money?”

Harvey lifts up a briefcase.

“Look, Harvey, you have to understand I can’t repay you.”

“I’ll go in and make sure you don’t have to.”

“What?” Mike’s breath catches in his throat. “No, you can’t, that’s the only thing that’s worse.”

Mike reaches for the briefcase, but Harvey pulls it away.

“Harvey, you don’t know these people.”

“And you do?” Harvey retorts, a challenging arch in his brow. He thankfully plunges on before Mike can form a reply: “This is what I do.”

“Defusing armed hostage situations?” Mike emits a slightly hysterical squeak.

“Making people fold. The DA happens to be number three on my speed dial, there’ll be hell to pay if they touch me.”

Mike flinches. “So the Manhattan DA would personally avenge your death?”

He pauses, then shrugs. “I’d like to think so.”

For the first time, even with the concussion, Mike sees a trace of fragility in his expression.

* * *

 

Harvey comes back, and a sigh of relief rattles through Mike. Trevor comes back too, and Harvey somehow managed to keep hold of the money as icing on the cake.

He approaches Mike’s cart the next morning.

“I don’t know how to repay you,” Mike confesses. “How does a lifetime of free coffee sound?”

“Your coffee’s not that good,” Harvey replies. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

Mike’s mind promptly spirals into the gutter.

Harvey smirks like he’s fighting the same thought, but out loud he says, “I want information.”

Of course he does.

So Mike tells him about the car crash. About the calc test, and Trevor’s dealing, and the $25,000 bill for Grammy’s care.

“What’d you do?”

“Trevor loaned me money for Grammy, and for me to start my own business.”

“Selling hot drinks and donuts and bagels?”

Mike nods.

“Anything else?”

Mike’s crumbling under Harvey’s stare, Harvey’s unreadable stare, and he knows this is where their story crashes to a halt.

“At Harvard Law, they ever teach you about plausible deniability?”

Harvey doesn’t answer. He just steps back and surveys the cart, the little glass cart and its rows of donuts and rainbow-colored signage, with fresh eyes.

“See you later, Mike,” Harvey murmurs, turning back to the office.

* * *

 

_“See you later, Mike.”_

Mike plays that sentence over and over in his head, analyzes it tone and wording, but he can’t pin Harvey down. Maybe Harvey was simply mulling it all over. Maybe he was judging. Maybe he was deciding to report Mike to number three on his speed dial.

But the cops haven’t swooped down on him just yet.

He loses track of the firm to the best of his ability. His brain gathers data on law firm politics automatically, but he refrains from actively processing it, from making his intricate projections. He tries to stop caring so damn much.

That’s what Harvey’d do, right?

A woman in couture and massive sunglasses marches up, shaking him from his reverie. “I need a skinny vanilla latte with extra whip and a shot of caramel . . .”

* * *

 

Mike’s only seen Harvey a couple times in the past couple weeks; he’s consistently in the middle of a phone call or a lecture for Harold. While Harvey looks over at the coffee cart sometimes, his eyes skim right over it, like it’s just another part of the set dressing for the epic biopic starring himself, no room for romantic subplots and coffee cart criminals.

* * *

 

Harold hobbles to his cart one morning when Mike’s setting up. “Can I just— just have all your espresso shots?”

He looks like hell, wrinkled suit and shadows around his eyes.

“They don’t even need to be hot,” he adds, “I’m not picky.”

“Jesus, Harold, what happened to you?”

Harold slumps forward and rubs his eyes. “The firm’s in chaos.”

“More than usual?”

“For me,” he moans. “First there was this mock trial and Harvey and Louis started using me to, I don’t know, play tug-of-war, and then Harvey’s ex showed up—”

“What?”

“Yeah, and I think she left again and now some supervillain flew in from Boston to destroy us and Harvey’s had me working for 48 hours straight, and _he’s_ been in the office for longer than that, so can I please buy some espresso?”

Mike considers the case and pronounces his verdict: “You don’t need espresso.”

“Mike,” Harold says, now leaning forward and speaking in a conspiratorial whisper, “I did hear about your other products, but I wasn’t sure if we’ve built up enough trust in this relationship yet to take it to the next level—”

“No, Harold.” Mike silences him before he can complete that train of thought. “I meant the really powerful stuff.”

Without breaking eye contact, he reaches under a shelf and pulls out a can of Red Bull.

* * *

 

“I thought you’d disappeared.”

“I told you—”

“You’d see me later, yeah, but everyone says stuff like that and they never mean it—”

“I do.”

Harvey’s standing in front of him. His eyes are slightly red, but his posture’s as crisp and elegant as ever. His tone brooks no argument, and yeah, Mike’s digging might have finally turned up a solid ethical core.

“I heard you were busy,” Mike says. He passes over the usual, black and two sugars, but Harvey doesn’t move to go.

“Still am.” He takes a long draught of his coffee and swallows slowly, savoring it. “But I’d like to ask your assistance on a business maneuver. Entirely legal, and paid in my gratitude, which I assure you is worth more than what you’d make if I gave you minimum wage.”

Mike furrows his brow. “What’s the job?”

“I’m going up against a firm called Unger and Macy. You know them?”

“Of course, they’re huge.”

“They are, and I’m trying to extract information from them that strictly speaking, they shouldn’t give me.”

He narrows his eyes. “How are you doing that?”

Harvey purses his lips and inhales a beat too long, like he’s summoning extra confidence. “I need you to back me up at a professional networking event at the Harvard Club. I’m going to interrogate Unger and Macy’s attorneys, specifically Brian Jennings from two years above me, and you’re going to facilitate by creating a distraction that throws them off their game.”

“What kind of distraction? If this involves me in drag—”

“I considered that,” Harvey says with a dismissive wave of the hand. “But you in a suit will do it.”

“So . . . how exactly am I throwing a bunch of attorneys off their game?”

“The simple shock factor of seeing me accompanied by a man should rattle them enough.”

“You’re asking me to pretend to date you?”

A frown embeds itself in Harvey’s forehead, and . . .

“Oh my god.” Mike staggers back. “You’re asking me to really date you.”

“Do you accept my terms?”

“Are you this bad with women? Because then, seriously, you just need me to be a wingman so we can get you laid—”

“No.”

“Find you a cute paralegal maybe—”

“Right now Louis is trying to get me fired for cancelling my entire morning in favor of the two redheads who were in my bed.”

“Two women?”

“This morning.”

“And you just told me about them? You _really_ need to work on your pickup lines—”

“Mike,” Harvey interrupts, “if this is you trying to tell me you’re not interested in men or just not in me, forget I asked.”

Mike quits his ribbing and genuinely looks at Harvey, and there’s that same fleeting fragility.

“What time do you need me there?”

* * *

 

Mike’s in a suit.

It’s not as constricting and awful as he expected when Donna delivered it to the cart, and Mike wonders how much it cost, and how much time Harvey spent checking him out to guess his measurements this accurately. Then Harvey places his hand on the small of Mike’s back, dissolving any and all lingering discomfort.

Harvey escorts him across the threshold of the Harvard Club. It’s a fairly large complex, all dark woods hung with gilded commemorative plaques. He greets the staff at the sign-in desk, and though they ask every other guest for their ID they hear “Harvey Specter” and melt. “Of course, Mr. Specter, we don’t need to fuss with those details, please come in at once . . .”

“What am I supposed to say exactly?” Mike whispers, leaning in towards Harvey.

“If you want, nothing, just nod your head and look pretty.”

“And if I don’t want?”

Harvey cocks his head to the side. “Then play it smart.”

Harvey strolls over to poor Brian Jennings at the bar and introduces himself, as if everyone in the room doesn’t know exactly who he is. “Brian, I’m Harvey Specter from Pearson Hardman, and this is . . .”

“Mike Ross,” he says seamlessly, reaching for a handshake. “Harvey’s plus-one.”

“My date,” Harvey amends, and Brian’s jaw nearly drops into his shot glass.

It takes fifteen minutes and another double-shot of scotch for Harvey to gather all the information he needs. He’s irresistible that way, downright magnetic, and lawyers all around the room are stealing looks at him.

Mike’s lucky Harvey is _his_.

“Now what?”

“Now we have fun,” Harvey purrs.

Mike’s about to ask what “fun” implies when Louis’s voice catches his attention, carrying from the next room over.

“Fine, Harold, if you’re so convinced that you deserve to swim in our pristine pool of eliteness, solve this trivial hypothetical question. If a client came to me in the past and said they’d backdated options, should I have expressed any kind of concern?”

“Um . . .”

Harold starts to flounder. Mike and Harvey share a glance and then start walking.

“I would— I would tell them they’ve got nothing to worry about. Backdating options is totally legal . . . right?”

“Wrong!” The word sounds like a buzzer through the room. “Come on, Harold, you can’t possibly be this incompetent—”

“Violations arise relating to disclosure under IRC, Section 409A,” Harvey says, smoothly inserting himself between Harold and Louis.

“Correct,” Louis scoffs. “But you have to rescue him?”

“Turns out I specialize in daring rescues. That’s why I just made senior partner.”

“Of course if you accept that answer plain, you’re still missing some of the nuance, Louis,” Mike cuts in.

“What the hell do you know?” Louis screws up his face. “You’re just the coffee cart guy, why are you even here?”

“You forgot Sarbanes-Oxley,” Mike answers, carefully keeping the smugness off his face. Though his eyes are locked on Louis, he’s sure Harvey’s smirking for him.

“That’s cute,” Louis sneers, “but the statute of limitations renders Sarbanes-Oxley moot post-2007.”

“Not if you can find actions to cover up the violation,” says Harvey.

And Mike adds, “The Sixth Circuit established that in May 2008.”

He finally turns to look at Harvey, expecting an obnoxious grin. Instead Harvey’s wearing a look he doesn’t recognize. A small warm smile that doesn’t collapse into a smirk upon observation, instead lingering. A gentle glow in his eyes.

"How can you possibly know all that?" he asks quietly, words tinged with awe while Louis and Harold flee in opposite directions.

"I like to read."

"How about we talk properly for a change? Per Se, tomorrow at nine?"

"Hang on, there's no way in hell you're getting Per Se that qui—" One look at Harvey's face shuts him up. "Yeah, that'd be good."

* * *

 

“Black coffee, no sugar.”

The next morning, Mike pours the drink and tries not to freak out over the fact that the Manhattan DA is currently casting an eye over his coffee cart.

“Here you go.” He briskly snaps the cap on and hands over the cup. Cameron Dennis— _Cameron Dennis_ — nods and starts to thank him, but Harvey’s arrival distracts them both.

“Harvey!” Cameron exclaims before Mike can speak.

Harvey’s got his sunglasses and his smirk on, but that smirk freezes for a second longer than it should. A second later, he takes off his sunglasses, never once glancing at Mike.

“Cameron,” he says warily, with that same half-smirk. “It’s good to see you.”

Mike’s tempted to cower against the back of his cart, maybe just make a break for it before he’s at last arrested, but Harvey won’t let that happen to him. Harvey will try to rescue him . . .

Unless Harvey needs the rescuing.

It’s a counterintuitive thought, but Mike doesn’t buy into the Superman persona anymore. He’s seen too many chinks in the armor, too many vulnerabilities, too much evidence that Harvey is in fact human.

“We should catch up, have lunch. Hey, you know what?” Cameron asks like it’s a Eureka moment, though the spontaneity’s surely a lie. “I’m free for dinner tonight! Just cancel whatever you have, and tell Jessica I demanded that you clear your schedule.”

“Dinner it is.”

Harvey’s smile is screwed on too tight. He doesn’t look at Mike.

“That’s my boy.”

He clasps Harvey’s arm, and Mike’s blood goes hot.

When Cameron walks away, Mike starts breathing again. “What the hell was that?”

Harvey’s still looking at Cameron.

“Harvey?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” His voice is flat, his eyes oddly unfocused as he hands over the cash.

Mike hands over his coffee, with extra special syrup thrown in for free. “You know I’m not buying that, right?”

Harvey’s eyes focus, settling on Mike’s, and the lost, young look there wrenches Mike’s gut.

“Sorry about dinner.”

* * *

 

Mike returns to the mystery.

His evidence is circumstantial, yet he can see the foundations of a case against Cameron Dennis. Against Harvey too, but Mike can’t bear the idea, even if he himself is in no position to judge.

* * *

 

Quarter to nine, someone taps on the cart window.

“We’re closed,” Mike sighs while he loads his spare bagels into a box for a nearby food bank, “like the sign says.”

“I usually ignore those,” comes the muffled reply.

Mike puts down the box, spins around and opens the window. “I thought dinner was at eight.”

“It was.”

“And?”

“Wasn’t to my taste.”

It’s an adequate double entendre, but Harvey delivers it without a lick of spirit.

Mike bends forward, folding his arms on the ledge. “What do you need, Harvey?”

“I can’t tell you—”

“Then how about I tell you what it looks like?” Mike says, calm as he can, keeping every hint of judgement off his face. “It looks like you were the finest ADA this city’s seen since Cameron Dennis. Specifically, it looks like you handled 18,362 cases in 2 years, about 36 a day, with a shockingly high success rate with plea deals. It also looks like you took 147 cases to trial and won every single one. And Harvey . . .”

Harvey meets his gaze, a silent plea in his eyes.

“You’re good, but those numbers are perfect.”

Harvey’s lips move, straining to form words that don’t quite come out at first. “I didn’t know. You have to believe me, Mike, this wasn’t who I chose to be.”

“Me neither.”

Harvey’s lips twitch, though whether from a sneer or suppressed tears Mike can’t tell.

“I . . .” Mike reaches below his shelf, behind his creamer cups to a latch. “I’m going to drop something on the floor. Feel free to ignore it.”

Some life returns to Harvey’s expression as he lifts his eyebrows, as Mike shuffles things around out of sight and stuffs one of his to-go bagel bags with a stale bagel and some fresh items that are most certainly not baked goods.

Though, ladies and gentlemen of the court, they surely count as baking goods.

Mike tapes the top of the bag shut and casually lays it on the window ledge. He meets Harvey’s eyes and then, casually, tips it off the ledge.

Harvey rapidly bends to grab it before it hits the ground.

“And you know,” Mike observes, “that’s a lot of bagel for one man’s snack, so . . .”

Harvey rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’ll share."

* * *

 

Mike expected to finally make it into Harvey’s apartment. Instead Harvey ushers him into the office building. Once Mike registers with security and the elevator doors close, Harvey leans back against the chrome bars on the back and lets out a sigh.

“What would you do,” he says, voice a low rumble, “if you got caught?”

“Being me or . . .”

“Being you.”

Mike shifts from one foot to the other, hands in his pockets; he feels out of place _inside_ the building. “Well, there’s this lawyer I know. Just made senior partner, his record’s fairly impressive.”

“Fairly?” Harvey deadpans, and it makes Mike smile.

“He’s an ex-ADA, so I figure maybe he’d cut me some sort of witness deal for turning on my suppliers.”

“Probably could, if he’s as good as you say.”

“Now,” Mike says, voice slowly growing stronger, _“I_ couldn’t possibly afford him, he charges something ridiculous like a thousand bucks an hour. But I have it on good authority he sometimes takes pro bono cases.”

Harvey lets his head fall to the side, looking at Mike as he ponders the hypothetical.

“Yeah,” he finally says. “For you.”

* * *

 

Harvey’s office is a masterpiece, all glass and pristine leather, but stacks of cardboard boxes are obscuring its clean lines.

“I can’t relax just yet,” Harvey grumbles. “Not until I know my convictions were clean.”

“How do I help?” Mike stands in the doorway, surveying the chaos.

Harvey spins on his heel with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “What would you be, if you could choose?”

“A lawyer.” The answer escapes him before he even grasp the question.

“Good. I have a deal for you.”

He flips open his laptop and taps a couple keys, and the printer behind Mike starts whirring. He goes to pick up the paper and starts reading. 

> This Temporary Paralegal Services Agreement (“ ** _Agreement”_** ) is made between Harvey Specter of Pearson Hardman, located at 601 Lexington Ave, New York, NY, and Michael James Ross ( **“** ** _The Paralegal_** **”** ) . . .

“Are you kidding me?”

“I can’t get through this—” he gestures at the boxes— “alone. I need your memory, and while I appreciate the benefits of coffee cart-client privilege, I need something stronger.”

“Don’t you have actual paralegals for this?”

“They’d probably turn me into the ABA,” he curtly replies.

“Whereas if I get you disbarred, you can get me arrested?”

“Whereas I don’t think you want to ruin my life in the first place,” Harvey corrects.

He’s not wrong.

“You got a pen?”

* * *

 

Harvey leaves the bagel bag on his desk unopened, and he drops a block of folders onto a coffee table in front of Mike before diving into his own files.

Forty minutes. It takes only forty minutes for Mike to unearth the Clifford Danner case, and he shoots up and hurries to Harvey, giving him the file and perching on the edge of the desk while he reads it.

He doesn’t have to explain it out loud. He can see when Harvey catches the discrepancy, nostrils flaring, lips tightening. He slaps the file down on his desk and leaps to his feet with a curse.

“You have to turn him in, Harvey.”

“I can’t.”

“He tricked you into jailing an innocent man—”

“I can’t!” He starts pacing the room, voice turning hoarse. “You wouldn’t get it, Mike, he was my _mentor_. He was the only person I had back then, he made me who I am—”

“So was Trevor,” Mike interrupts, “to me.”

“It’s not the same.”

“How? I was an orphan, Harvey. There was a solid decade of my life where the only people I consistently talked to were Trevor and my _grandmother_.”

Harvey stalks towards him, shoulders hunched.

“So what do you want me to do,” he demands, “just drop him?”

“You want me to do that to Trevor, don’t you?” Mike replies, steadily meeting his gaze.

Harvey glances away first.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Mike mutters. “You cut him loose, and I’ll drop Trevor. I’ll go clean.”

“Clean?”

“Just hot drinks and donuts and bagels.”

“The entire firm would revolt. You’re why we’re the second-worst firm to work at, not the first.”

Mike grins. “Louis would hate me if he knew.”

He smiles for an instant. Then his poker face slams into place. “You mean that deal?”

“I do.”

“You know you could just drop Trevor anyway, right?” Harvey lifts his chin and fixes him with a challenging stare. “If it’s such a good move.”

“It is a good move,” Mike admits, “but I don’t think I’d follow through unless I was doing it for you.”

Harvey watches him, reading him closely.

Then he reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a phone, and drafts a message. Decoding it upside-down, Mike realizes he’s offering to cooperate with the Attorney General's investigation into Cameron in exchange for immunity.

Harvey’s eyes flicker up. “You sure?”

“I’ll run a perfectly normal coffee cart.”

He presses ‘send.’

“I think we can do better than that.”

Harvey’s voice is low, a touch too tender for sultry. Still Mike’s warm all over, his eyes inexplicably drawn to Harvey’s lips.

“Mike.”

“Hm?”

“How about you come to my apartment so we can . . . experiment?”

He’s not looking at the bagel bag.

“Well, there’s a problem with that,” Mike murmurs. “I’ve waited a couple years. Don’t wanna wait anymore.”

Harvey’s eyes widen. “A couple years?”

Mike wraps one hand around Harvey’s oddly elegant polka-dotted tie and pulls ever so slightly. “Do you have any idea how hot you are in these suits?”

“We’re in a glass-walled office,” Harvey warns.

“An empty glass-walled office.”

Though it’s hard to say which of them moves first, Harvey’s lips are suddenly tender against his, and Mike moans from 2 years, 7 months, and 16 days of sexual tension.

“Ahem.”

Harvey recoils, Mike swivels his head, and Jessica Pearson is watching them both from the doorway. Mike looks to Harvey, who for once seems too startled to say anything.

So Mike snatches the bagel bag. “Want one?”

He holds a joint out to Jessica.

There’s silence.

Harvey explodes first. “ _You’re_ her dealer? God, do you know how many times I’ve asked—”

Jessica cuts him off: “How was your dinner?”

“Lousy. Mike convinced me to testify.”

She arches her eyebrows. “And how exactly did he do that?”

“With a well-reasoned legal argument,” Harvey replies smoothly.

“No other favors involved?”

“Hey!” Mike squawks.

“He used an elegant mix of legal technique and personal negotiation,” Harvey insists, “all of it ethically sound. By the way, he’s going to Harvard Law next year.”

“I’m _what_?”

“After which he will _not_ go to the DA for so-called ‘trial experience,’ because he’ll be coming here instead.”

“Are you _planning out my future_?”

"Do you not want this?" Harvey asks point-blank.

Mike tries to explain that this isn't him, he's not meant to rule the world from the fiftieth floor. He can only be the pot guy stuck in the cold outside, competing against twenty other pot guys at coffee carts down the street.

That's a lie if he's ever heard one.

"No, I do want this," he admits.

“And what makes you think,” Jessica says like she’s repressing a squawk herself, “that I’m going to hire another insufferable screw-up?”

“Another . . . _what_?”

She shifts her attention to Mike. “Why are _you_ worth the trouble?”

He pauses.

“Name any crime you can commit in New York.”

“Drug distribution.”

Harvey snorts. Mike’s shoulders fall, until—

“New York addresses drug offenses in articles 220 and 221. Starting from 220.31 you see regulations on the sale of specific drugs; for instance, 220.34, subsection 3 deals with the sale of concentrated cannabis, while subsection 5 deals with methadone, etc. All drug sale convictions are treated as felonies, anywhere from fifth-class to first-class, and punishments take into account the number of previous offenses—”

“How about strangulation, which I’m currently considering?” she says, smile unwavering.

“Uh. There are three possible offenses relating to strangulation, known as strangulation in the first degree, strangulation in the second degree, and criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation, of which only the first two are felonies. As your non-lawyer I recommend avoiding strangulation, a crime which may also be linked to other charges for, say, murder—”

“He already passed the bar,” Harvey pipes up, and it’s true, though Mike never ever told him that.

So he wasn’t the only one obsessing from afar.

“And . . .” Mike’s eloquence deserts him until Harvey touches his hand, lacing their fingers together. “And I’m unusually familiar both with the work you do here— I was actually largely responsible for getting you the Keller account—” Harvey hums in agreement— “and with the personnel you hire. And I greatly appreciate their skills and talents, but with all due respect . . .” He squares his shoulders and looks Jessica in the eye. “I’m better than pretty much everyone here, present company excepted. If you don’t believe me and Harvey, you can ask Louis Litt about the Harvard Club.”

“In that case,” Jessica counters, “why haven’t you applied through a legitimate channel?”

“Because, as you said, I’m a screw-up. And I haven’t had the guidance that I need, I never had any real access to this world until Harvey swanned into my life. But you should hire me,” he says, refusing to back down. “Because I will work as hard as it takes to school these Harvard . . . alums and become the best lawyer you have ever seen.”

Jessica tilts her head. “That’s an impressive promise, but I could decide to go another way.”

“Just remember he’s got blackmail material on you and most of the firm,” Harvey answers cheerfully.

Jessica gives Harvey a look. Mike holds his breath.

“You are _never_ going to be his direct supervisor.”

Mike does a fist-pump, while Harvey whines— _whines —_in protest.

“Also, no more drugs.” Harvey instinctively reaches for the bagel bag, and she rolls her eyes. “After tonight, Jesus Christ.”

Mike tucks the joint back in with its friends, already feeling a little high.

“Starting tomorrow, Harvey, I need you preparing to testify.” With that she leaves, wearily shaking her head.

When the door falls shut behind her, Mike lets loose a giddy laugh. Also chuckling, Harvey wraps one arm around his shoulder and down towards his other hip, pulling him close.

They’ll make the most of tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote another coffee shop AU for Marvey Secret Santa! [Here it is if you're interested.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16924392)


End file.
